NZ

New Zealand has nine mul­ti­day ex­cur­sions of­fi­cially la­belled ‘Great Walks’ — Lake Waikare­moana, Ton­gariro, Whanganui River (ac­tu­ally more of a pad­dle), Abel Tas­man, Hea­phy, Route­burn, Milford, Ke­pler and Rak­iura. Only the first three are in the North Is­land and the last is on Ste­wart Is­land.

This book, by Dunedin-based hus­band-and­wife tramp­ing en­thu­si­asts, is all you need to bone up on and com­plete any of th­ese di­verse, spec­tac­u­lar and well­main­tained walks. Each one comes with maps, el­e­va­tion pro­files, high­lights, track de­tails, sec­tion-by­sec­tion de­scrip­tions, and plan­ning ad­vice — not to men­tion a tempt­ing over­view just to get you ex­cited.

The book also of­fers prac­ti­cal gen­eral ad­vice and help­ful web­sites. What could pos­si­bly go wrong? Buy some new tramp­ing boots just in case. — Peter Shand